Aristotle's Lantern

"How do you clean SEA URCHINS?"
I was asked this question countless time last week after posting photos of Masses Of Sea Urchins On Sanibel Island last week (to see the article CLICK HERE). So now Im going to do better than tell you... Im going to show you!
I only collect SEA URCHINS that are in the high and dry wrack line on the beach - they are never damp so I know for sure they aren't alive. I love the ones that have already lost their spines and have a big empty hole in the center since most of the cleaning has already done by Mother Nature. But if Mother Nature hasn't had time to do our cleaning for us, we have a couple of options.
First option- leave your SEA URCHINS outside in the sun for several weeks and let the spines fall off and shake the "crumbs" from the inside. Easy peazy but it takes a while.
Second option:
If the spines of your dry URCHINS don't come off by gently rubbing your fingers against the test (body), place your SEA URCHINS in a bucket of water …

All along Sanibel's shore this week, SEA URCHINS have washed up on the beach (along with all sorts of other cool things!) after strong winds last week.
Have you ever seen the inside of a SEA URCHIN? This one had been crushed (and decayed) but the only thing that happen to be still in tact was its mouth laying on the beach. When we see just this part of a SEA URCHIN we call it the ARISTOTLE'S LANTERN.
We don't see the ARISTOTLE'S LANTERN laying alone on the beach completely in tact very often since each part of the mouth like the five teeth that it using for chewing will get very brittle and fall apart after it dries out. In the next photo, on the left you can see the crushed TEST (the shell-like part) exposes the ARISTOTLE'S LANTERN and the one on the right has only a small part of the center mouth showing because its TEST is completely in tact.
You can see the teeth showing in this SEA URCHIN (this is the opposite end of ARISTOTLE'S LANTERN thats showing in the …